Unterentfelden, Switzerland – April 5, 2005 – The Metrology Division of Leica Geosystems announced today it is now shipping its newest Local Positioning product, the Leica T-Scan hand scanner. In February, Leica Geosystems successfully concluded an extensive benchmarking period for the T-Scan at a wide range of industrial test sites including Daimler Chrysler, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Peugeot and Toyota. The T-Scan offers high-speed data capture of complex object surfaces, and strategically expands the measurement capabilities of Leica’s LTD800/700 laser tracking systems. Leica Geosystems leads the industry with more than 1,400 tracker systems installed worldwide in the automotive, aerospace, and general engineering industries.

Walter Mittelholzer, President of Leica Geosystems Metrology Division states  “This really is the world’s first-ever complete universal CMM solution for large measurement volumes, and it will bring another dimension to the shop floor. No competitor in the marketplace has a complete solution that combines laser tracking functionality with probing and scanning capabilities in the largest measurement volume.”

Dr. Jürgen Dold, Vice President for Business Development at Leica Geosystems’ Metrology Division, says: "With the latest addition of a full scanning capability our engineers have completed an important milestone in creating the most flexible universal CMM. Combining the Leica Tracker and T-Probe with our new Leica T-Scan enables metrologists to walk around with a hand held scanner in measurement volumes of up to 30m for digitizing small and large objects gathering millions of points in a few minutes.”

With this technological innovation reverse engineering and inspection processes require less time for set-ups and object preparation that leads to at least 50% time savings. The accuracy of better than of 100 microns within a 30m measurement volume makes the Leica Tracker combined with the Leica T-Probe and the new Leica T-Scan – the industry leading solution.

Leica Geosystems metrology product line delivers the industry’s most essential tools to capture measurements with unprecedented precision, speed, and flexibility in the most demanding industrial environments.

Leica Geosystems – a portrait
Leica Geosystems develops, manufactures and markets systems for surveying, mapping and position determination. With its innovations in spatial data acquisition for surveying, photogrammetry and global positioning (GPS) tasks, it is one of the leading companies in the world in its sector. Customers realise major international terrestrial, land and cadastral surveying, engineering and machine tool manufacture, construction, industrial, telecommunications and safety engineering projects around the world using system solutions from Leica Geosystems.

With a company history that goes back to the year 1819, Leica Geosystems is one of the oldest industrial companies in existence, and has since then left its mark like no other on the technological history of position determination and surveying. Following its separation from the Leica group ("Capture new dimensions"), Leica Geosystems AG has been listed on the Swiss stock market since July 2000. The 2300 staff generate a turnover of five hundred million Swiss Francs, and that with high growth rates.

Along with the Heerbrugg headquarters in the Rhein valley, St. Gall, Switzerland, the company also has development and production subsidiaries in America and Asia. With 18 wholly owned selling and service units, as well as 100 distribution partners, we provide close dialogue with customers around the globe. In addition, strategic partnerships exist with leading companies for complementary technologies in semiconductor engineering (GPS), geomatics (GIS) and 3-D laser engineering.

Leica Geosystems was one of the first to sign the international chamber of commerce environmental protection charter and is bound to high international quality and environmental standards.

Additional information can be found at: www.leica-geosystems.com